Thanks Larry I look up plants that people mention here to learn about them & see if they could be found here. My copy of 'Plants for Beekeeping in Canada and Northern USA' says eranthis hyemalis(eranthis d'hiver) is an excellent source of early pollen. Maybe your 2 lost hives were weaker than the others. I count the seams of bees at packing time when I treat with oxalic drizzle in early December. I have found that if there are less than 5 seams with bees clustered, they do not make it through our 'normal' (whatever that is) winter. I posed the question here on Bee-L about combining these weak hives that late in the year and got an answer from Alan Dick formally of this list. In late Nov early Dec when doing my oxalic acid treatment, I record the number of seams of bees on which I drizzle oxalic. I have found that if there are 4 seams of clustered bees or less, they do not survive our winter. Now if I was smarter I would have combined much earlier. Should I: 1- Place one hive brood box directly on top of the other after the bees have clustered (both are queen right) 2- As in 1 with a queen excluder between the 2 hives 3- Use the newspaper method before they cluster (several warmer days predicted later this week -5C tonight, +10C Thurs and Fri) 4- Place each weak hive on top of a stronger hive to take advantage of the heat (no connection between the hives) 5- Kiss the weaker hives goodbye 6- Better ideas? I do #1 on your list. Place the heavier one on top and rotate the boxes so the clusters are lined up above and below one another. If the bees are torpid when combined and no great disturbance is made, there should be no fighting, and the two clusters should unite over time when it warms up. You should be able to do this even in cold weather as long as you are deft, don’t blunder around or drop boxes and bees. Bob Darrell Caledon Ontario Canada 44N80W *********************************************** The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html